Well ladies and gentlemen, summer’s over. 

Forget about the end of the official season.  It’s September 1st and the pumpkin spice trees will be blooming in a matter of minutes at every coffee house, bagel bistro, and seasonal cookie aisle across the fruited plain.

That’s just the way stuff works y’all.

All things being equal, this last summer which kicked off on New Years Day has been a momentous one.  As I reflect upon everything that’s taken place since my birthday 3 months ago where I entered 51-hood eating Mongolian BBQ while ensconced in the aural delight of “Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting”, I can’t help but to flash forward a few months to where I sit in a hotel on the north side of Dallas and reaffirm a certain truism in my life which continues to keep about six feet of my lower gastrointestinal system wrapped up in a frenetic state of discombobulation.

There comes a time in all of our lives when we have to put considerable thought into whether the Dallas Fort Worth metrosex is all it’s cracked up to be.

Quick side note.  I’ve got my earbuds in as I type this morning’s soliloquy and I’m noticing a vibration in Righty.  That’s unfortunate, and just another trinket in my jar of first world problems.

Certainly I have loved ones and cherished acquaintances here.  It’s those very people I’ll continue to counsel (or is it council…) in the future about the dangers of taking up residence in a municipality which gets either corrupt or incompetent inspiration for its freeway system from the third slimy hairball coughed up by some ambiguously gendered Calico which had spent a good hour or so gnawing on that thing on his ass just minutes before.

Blogger Laureate’s note:  years from the composition of this piece where I wrote about a trip I took for a wedding, I’m going to read that previous passage and spit take my psyllium fiber infused, cherry lime flavored beverage all over my primary monitor. 

I’ll take a moment to clean up my mess.

Pause for effect / affect……

Okay we’re right back at it now and I’m back at home in front of the PC.

Man alive, the only saving grace about making my way up and down I-35 between home and Dallas is a Bucc-ee’s or two strategically placed with the capacity of my bladder in mind.  They offer up clean bathrooms, tasty chopped beef sandwiches, and a rich variety of dress code decisions made by the hundreds of people on the premises at the same time you are that will either reaffirm or prosecute your own dress code decisions on any given day.

Did I mention dress code?  Yeah, I’ll touch on that later as we wrap up summer.

Did I mention summer?

Of course I did.  That’s why I’m here at this point.  I’ve been directed to write an essay about what I did this summer so that the new teacher can make an assessment about my writing skills and whether I should have taken the short bus to school.

So with that in mind, I’m going to start with a little bit of housekeeping, move to the good stuff, and then cap it off with the gooder stuff where I inadvertently became the margin of error. 

First of all, let’s get the incidentals out of the way. 

Juniorette moved back into the compound this summer so that she can pursue an advanced degree in whatever mad science she’s studying.  In the process, she expunged Wifey’s craft-a-torium from her old bedroom, painted it, and installed laminate flooring.  In the process, she inspired me to redo the walls and floor in Junior’s old room from which TharpSter.Org is published.  Keep in mind that the content from this site is dispatched to the internet much like Wikileaks document dumps originate from some social media chamber housed in the Ecuadorian Embassy stationed in some far off land that I think I know, but am just too lazy to look up right now.  The walls have been painted and a TV has been placed on a newly built shelf in the corner just above my laptop.  I installed that shelf a few weeks ago, yet even still, I wonder if I got that bad boy attached to enough studs to keep the TV from crushing my laptop if/when the incompetence of my construction skills decides it’s time to shine. 

Spammers and telemarketers alike continue their relentless pursuit of my disposable income via my phone.  The saving grace here is that I’ve found a way to mess with their heads without even talking to them in the form of a voicemail application.  Nowadays, when a call comes in from an unknown number, the voicemail software plays that annoying tone that suggests that I didn’t pay my bill and got my phone service turned off.  That tone tells either the auto-dialer or the accent wielding assailant on the other side of the line that my number is no good and should be removed from the rolls.  It also suggests to them that if I can’t afford to keep my phone service active, I sure as shootin’ can’t afford their solar panels, life insurance, or fees to remove my social security number from suspension.   In the grand scheme of things, the application has greatly reduced these calls and has forced me to pursue other subject matter to discuss here on my beloved website.

Some of those other things are hamburgers. 

First of all, shame on Burger King for coming out with a meatless Whopper.  Patties made from plants?  I don’t think so.  The only plant based hamburger patty I want is from the cow that was planted in some pasture that’s been tipped a few times by idiots with a little bit too much time on their hands.

During the first three months of DT51, I tried two new hamburgers.  The first one came to me within a matter of a few miles of the base of some big ass mountain in the Rockies.  It was prepared the way I always have my burgers prepared (MuLTO) and delivered to me in a paper bag on top of what I would assess to be no less than about a one week output of the Idaho gross national product, sliced, fried, and salted. 

I guess the term “small order of fries” is relative. 

The burger was delicious.  Kudos to the good people at one of the three locations of Five Guys in Colorado Springs for aiding in the continuation of my faith in a good, pasture-born (I think that’s called ‘pasteurized’), occasionally-tipped burger prepared the way I want it.  On a side note, I know that review comes a few months too late.  The issue here is that this isn’t a food blog unless I’m waxing rhapsodic about nachos or guacamole.  Beyond that, discussions about vittles around here strike me as food porn.

Speaking of food porn, let’s talk about the other burger I tried this summer. 

Imagine if you will, ladies and gentlemen, all the power, all the love, all of the cheesy goodness, and all of the gastronomical distress of a basin of nachos packed into a itty-bitty living space in the confines of a hamburger bun.  Good Lord in Queso, that thing was good. 

I can’t even summon enough words from the English language, any language I don’t know, and any language I could make up to describe how good that thing was.

So I won’t. 

I’ll just post a picture of it as the featured image and move on to the events of this last weekend where I attended no less than 1.33 weddings while adorned in less than ceremonial garb on each of those occasions.

This last Saturday, Wifey and I packed it up in the ole hoopty and headed up I-35 to attend a wedding.

If you read the first part of this post without skipping to the bottom, you would already understand the trepidations I had with making that trip.

Side note:  That banging you may be hearing in the background is Juniorette in the kitchen with my rubber mallet, one of my good Phillips head screwdrivers, and a coconut.

I sure wish she’d use the straight slot screwdriver instead.  I have about as much use for straight slot screws that I do for daylight savings time, pickles, and the DFW freeway system.

Anyway, it was a beautiful wedding.  A great reception followed and I had the opportunity to catch up with the two brothers in law and the one brother that I don’t see a whole lot.

At the wedding of exactly half of all of my nieces, I donned the Duggar style dress code of a short sleeved, cotton knit shirt in navy blue (dark solids unite), a pair of slacks, and some casual shoes I wear to work.  I don’t even wear slacks to work, so the fact that I put some on for one of my nieces was saying something.

It would seem that the dress code for the wedding dictated a little more effort than I exuded.  Had I consulted the website announcing the details, I wouldn’t have been the one comfortably dressed in-duh-vidual at the venue.

Fortunately, my brother was the only one who took issue with my attire.  As my brother, the rigid rules around Sibling-Law dictate that his opinions automatically take the same station as daylight savings time, pickles and the DFW freeway system in my book.  If others took issue, they’re being righteously indignant about it and haven’t given me a piece of their mind yet.

Did I mention 1.33 weddings?

Of course I did.

It would seem that the hotel where we holed up for the evening after being comfortably dressed was hosting an Indian wedding.  More specifically, it was hosting what I’m guessing was days 2 and 3 of the ceremony.  As we returned from the wedding we meant to attend, we went into the hotel bar for some adult refreshments.  Just down the hall, the Indians were smack dab in the middle of their own party, complete with flashing lights, loud music, and tom-tom drums.  Every guest we saw had gotten the dress code memo.  Some of them, donned in colors and styles other than short sleeved, cotton knit shirts and dress slacks were at the bar taking in refreshments as well.

The next morning, our hotel hosted a breakfast for the wedding party we had attended the night before.  I wore a t-shirt and cargo shorts, and found out immediately that this was consistent with others from the party who attended the breakfast.

But then it started up again.

Earlier in the morning, I had seen some of the guests of the Indian affair wandering around the hotel grabbing breakfast from the buffet that had been set up for that event.  A few hours later, as the collection of non-diverse individuals, for which I was a part, sat down to enjoy a traditional breakfast and reminisce about the speech the father of the bride gave and that one idiot who couldn’t bother to wear a tie, the tom-tom drums started up again. 

Woah, back up a tick.

The hotel had a hallway loaded up with several meeting rooms which could be used for multiple purposes.  We had one for our breakfast.  Next door to us, a small Christian service was taking place.  It was Sunday morning after all.

BOOM.  BOOM.  BOOM.  BOOM.

Just outside, in the parking lot on the back side of the building, the Indian party had gathered behind a pickup truck which was loaded up with a DJ and some speakers.  Behind them, a cluster of men in ceremonial garb were dancing to the music while the groom (for lack of a better word), adorned in a hot pink turban, sat on top of a crossover receiving all of the energy generated by the Bollywood-inspired tributes to choreography down below. 

Naturally, the whole spectacle introduced a whole new element into the family breakfast.  At the same time, I’ve got to think the event was even more inspirational for the group of Christians next door to us trying to worship the Lord at the local Sheraton with what sounded like a war party not far behind.  I’m thinking contributions for the new building fund were up that day.

So there you go.

That’s how I spent my summer.

What did you do?